'Bring back Twitter': Elon Musk gets heckled at video game tournament

Elon Musk's decision to rebrand the microblogging platform Twitter as X has not gone down well with many of its users. He attended the Valorant World Championship Final in Los Angeles on Saturday, and was met with vehement boos from the crowd.

The incident came to light after a video of the event went viral on social media platforms. In the video, the crowd could also be heard asking him to "bring back Twitter."

"Where is that from? That can't be from in here, surely," one of the commentators asks as the crowd continues to jeer at Musk. The camera then pans to Musk, who does not look too perturbed by all the booing and sloganeering.

In fact, he later took to X to clarify that it was mostly cheers for him. "Technically, it was 90% cheers & 10% boos (except during quiet periods), but, still, that's a lot of boos, which is a first for me in real life (frequent on Twitter)," Musk wrote.

Some of his admirers later came to his defence and put several posts on X in his support.

"Imagine this. Elon Musk, the greatest entrepreneur of our generation, shows up to support the biggest Valorant gaming event of the year (with his kid). But the crowd is so disconnected from reality, that they decide to boo him?" one of the Twitter users wrote.

"Elon Musk basing every choice he ever makes off wanting desperately to make people like him only to get booed *more* every time he appears in public is so great," commented another.

This is not the first time that Musk has been booed at a public event. The billionaire had a similar experience last year after he was invited onstage by comedian Dave Chappelle. The crowd went berserk, and the boos were loud enough to get Musk and the media's attention.

"Cheers and boos, I see. Elon..." says Chappelle, and he is soon interrupted by the boos. Musk could not even respond to it in a complete sentence as the audience began to boo at him.

"It sounds like some of the people you fired are in the audience," Chappelle joked. The footage from the incident had gone viral on social media, however, it is no longer available on the platform. It now remains to be seen if the video from the Valorant event stays on X.

For those unaware, Musk bought Twitter in October 2022. Since then, the 52-year-old has radically overhauled the social media platform. Among other changes, Twitter is now paying premium subscribers for ads served in their replies.